ETH researchers receive EU grants

04/11/2018
public

Zurich – Ten professors from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) have secured an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council. More than half the projects submitted by the ETH have therefore been granted funding by the EU.

The European Research Council (ERC) is part of the EU Research and Innovation programme Horizon 2020 and awards high-value grants in the area of fundamental research annually. This year, 2,167 projects applied but only 269 received an ERC Advanced Grant, the ETH revealed in a press release. The ETH submitted 18 applications, of which ten were successful. In the current round, further ERC Advanced Grants were awarded only to the French CRNS and Oxford University.

The ten researchers from ETH have been awarded a total of around EUR 26 million by the EU. The funds will be used to support projects in seven ETH departments. The topics of the research projects, awarded between €2.2 million and €3.2 million each, include the development of electronically controlled gene circuits, the optimisation of data-intensive applications, the cycling of trace elements in the environment and research on weather processes.

“ETH researchers from a wide range of disciplines have continually succeeded in asserting themselves against strong international competition with their projects,” Detlef Günther, ETH Vice President for Research and Corporate Relations, comments on the high success rate of ETH’s applications. “This proves the high quality of the entire spectrum of ETH research.” Three of the ETH researchers are even receiving the coveted ERC Advanced Grant for the second time.